This piece is not about defending the Chinese Communist Party, modern Chinese politics, or pretending China is some benevolent force acting out of kindness. It is about definitions, history, and reality. Imperialism is a specific thing. China does not fit it, historically or today.
Calling China imperialist might feel emotionally satisfying in Western political discourse, but it collapses the moment you examine how China sees itself, how it has behaved over time, and how it actually operates beyond its borders.
China before communism and how China sees itself
To understand China’s behavior, you have to start long before Mao. China did not develop as a seaborne, expansionist empire like Britain, Spain, or later the United States. It developed as a civilizational state. This matters.
The very name Zhong Guo translates roughly as Middle Kingdom. This is not branding. It reflects a worldview. China historically saw itself as the cultural and political center between heaven and earth, surrounded by lesser but still independent states. The aim was stability, hierarchy, and recognition, not conquest for its own sake.
Imperial China expanded territorially at times, but almost always inward and contiguous. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan are not viewed by China as colonies. They are viewed as China. That does not mean everyone agrees with that claim, but the distinction is critical. Imperialism is about ruling other peoples as external subjects. China’s position is that these territories are internal, historically Chinese, and inseparable from the state itself.
This worldview predates communism by centuries. Dynasties rose and fell, borders shifted, but the underlying assumption remained the same. China is China. It is not a missionary civilisation trying to spread itself across the globe. It does not have a tradition of exporting ideology, religion, or governance overseas through force.
Regional power does not mean global empire
China does want to be the dominant power in its own region. This is not controversial. Every major civilisation has sought this. The United States enforces dominance across the Americas. Russia asserts dominance in its near abroad. China does the same in East Asia.
That does not make China imperialist. It makes China regional.
China’s strategic focus has always been defensive and regional. Control the periphery. Prevent hostile forces from surrounding it. Maintain internal cohesion. This is why Tibet and Taiwan are non negotiable from Beijing’s perspective. They are seen as unfinished business of national unification, not overseas possessions.
Even during the communist era, when China was ideologically aligned with revolutionary movements, it did not turn allies into colonies. North Korea is the clearest example. China intervened massively in the Korean War. Millions of Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River. Yet North Korea was not annexed, absorbed, or economically strip mined. It remained sovereign, dysfunctional as it may be.
That alone separates China from classical imperial powers.
China’s wars and what they actually were
China’s modern wars are often cited as evidence of aggression,
but context matters.
The Korean War was defensive from China’s perspective. A hostile force backed by the United States was approaching its border. China acted to prevent an American aligned state sitting directly on the Yalu River. That is not imperial expansion. That is strategic containment.
The 1962 border war with India was short, limited, and territorial. It did not result in occupation of Indian cities or long term domination. It was about disputed Himalayan borders inherited from colonial era cartography.
The 1979 war with Vietnam is often misunderstood. China and Vietnam had been allies during the Vietnam War. The break came when Vietnam aligned with the Soviet Union and invaded Cambodia, overthrowing the Chinese backed Khmer Rouge. China responded with a punitive invasion of northern Vietnam to signal limits. The war lasted weeks, not years. China withdrew. There was no occupation. No colony. No attempt to remake Vietnam.
These are not the behaviors of an imperialist state. Imperialism is sustained domination. China’s wars have been short, bounded, and geographically limited.
China in Africa and the business reality
China’s presence in Africa is constantly described as imperialist. This says more about Western insecurity than Chinese behavior. China does not send governors. It does not impose political systems. It does not redraw borders. It does not run African countries through colonial administrations. What it does is build infrastructure, extract resources through contracts, and trade.
African governments engage China because China treats them as partners, not pupils. There are no lectures about governance. No moral conditionality. No threats of regime change. Deals are transactional. Roads for minerals. Ports for access. Loans for construction.
This is why China is popular in Africa at the state level. Not because China is altruistic, but because it does business without pretending to civilize. Imperial powers demand obedience and ideological alignment. China demands repayment and access.
You can criticize debt structures. You can criticize labor practices. But that is not imperialism. That is capitalism conducted by a state actor.
Why the Greenland claim is propaganda
This brings us to the claim that China is eyeing Greenland, floated by Donald Trump and echoed uncritically by sections of the media. This is not just wrong. It is unhinged.
China has no historical, cultural, strategic, or civilizational interest in Greenland. It is on the other side of the world. It offers no role in China’s core security concerns. China does not operate that way.
The accusation relies on projecting Western imperial logic onto a state that does not share it. The idea that China must be planning global territorial conquest because it is powerful is lazy thinking. It ignores everything about how China defines itself.
What makes the claim grotesque is that it is delivered by a political figure whose own country has openly discussed using military force to seize territory. The United States has threatened intervention in sovereign states repeatedly in living memory. China has not.
And yet millions still accept the narrative. China is framed as the imperialist threat, while actual imperial behavior is waved away as defense or leadership.
Conclusion
China is not imperialist. It is assertive, authoritarian, and self interested, but those are not synonyms. China’s history, worldview, wars, and overseas behavior all point to a state focused on internal cohesion and regional dominance, not global conquest.
Calling China imperialist is not analysis. It is propaganda. It flattens history, ignores definitions, and serves a political purpose. If we cannot distinguish between empire and power, then the word imperialism becomes meaningless.